Information Clearinghouse
On general progress toward meeting the health-related Millennium Development Goals:
Lancet Review
Timed for release with the Countdown 2008 Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, the cover article in The Lancet’s April 12-18 issue provides new analyses on trends in maternal, newborn, and child survival.
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Countdown to 2015: Maternal, Newborn & Child Survival
This 2008 UNICEF report focuses on the 68 countries with the world’s highest burdens of maternal and child mortality and tracks indicators of health status, health system strength, and coverage equity. A key finding is that most of the countries are increasing coverage for preventive interventions such as vaccinations but are making slower progress in reaching women and children with clinical care.
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The State of the World’s Children 2008
The world must act more effectively to reduce child deaths through 2015 to reach the MDG of reducing by half the number of children dying before their fifth birthday, according to the most recent issue of the UNICEF series. The report establishes the daily death number at more than 26,000 and predicts that, "if trends continue, 4.3 million child deaths will occur in 2015 that could have been averted" if the MDG were met.
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State of the World’s Mothers 2007: Saving the Lives of Children Under 5
Of the developing countries that together account for 94% of child deaths, 20 have made either no progress in reducing deaths of children 5 and younger—and in some cases, their rates have worsened in the past 15 years, according to this analysis. At the same time, the UNICEF report identifies five countries—Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and the Philippines—as "doing an admirable job" improving health and reducing child mortality.
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Tracking Progress in Child Survival
For this 2005 report, UNICEF and nine international partners focused on four child survival interventions: immunization, prevention, newborn health, and case management. It presents recent trend data for each one alongside information on demographics, nutrition, national health policies, and determinants of coverage. None of the 60 countries studied achieved "even minimal coverage levels" for most interventions, but some increased by as much as 10% the share of mothers and babies with access to life-saving interventions.
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On regional progress toward the MDGs:
Every Death Counts
This 2008 report and article in the April 12-18 issue of The Lancet represent a call to action to save the lives of mothers, babies, and children in South Africa, where every year more than 20,000 babies are stillborn and at least 1,600 mothers die due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth. This publication of the country’s Department of Health and Medical Research Council, Save the Children, UNICEF, and the health sciences faculty of the University of Pretoria also explores high-impact interventions. (GAPPS investigator Joy Lawn is one of the authors.)
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Opportunities for Africa’s Newborns: Practical Data, Policy, and Programmatic Support for Newborn Care in Africa
Close to 1.2 million newborn babies die every year in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to this 2006 report of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, & Child Health. In addition to its high rate of newborn deaths, the region is making the slowest progress in reducing mortality. The report’s authors contend that two-thirds of these babies could be saved with low-cost, low-technology interventions, most of which are not currently reaching the poor. (GAPPS investigator Joy Lawn is one of the editors.)
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The Millennium Development Goals: A Latin American and Caribbean Perspective
This 2005 report of the United Nations Economic Commission examines common challenges to achieving the goals in regions not only with wide disparities in both health status and development levels but also stagnant public-sector investment in health, inadequate public health infrastructure, and overall "social discontent."
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Turning Promises into Progress: Attaining the Health MDGs in Asia and the Pacific
The region that experiences a disproportionately large share of the world’s "conflicts and disasters" accounts for nearly half of all maternal deaths worldwide. This 2005 report from the WHO Regional Office of the Western Pacific presents steps toward the MDGs in four sub-regions, each with wide health disparities; the number of years projected to reduce maternal mortality by half is, for example, 4-6 in Thailand, 6-7 in Sri Lanka, and 8-9 in Malaysia.
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Millennium Development Goals: Progress and Prospects in Europe and Central Asia 2005
The ECA region of 28 countries and 478 million people experienced rapid economic growth and institutional strengthening over the past decade. But pockets of the region, particularly in Eastern Europe, wrestle with stubborn issues such as high infant and child mortality and high HIV/AIDS prevalence. And progress toward the goals cannot lose sight of certain "marginalized communities" such as the Roma, whose life expectancy is 15 years less than the majority population.
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On stillbirth rates:
The Lancet Issue
GAPPS investigators Cynthia Stanton and Joy Lawn are among the authors of an analysis of stillbirth rates published in the May 6, 2006, volume of The Lancet. The authors determined that rates ranged from 5 per 1,000 in rich countries to 32 per 1,000 in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
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please contact Alice Porter.